


Haunting Consequence

by CherryFlight



Series: SWTOR: The Reflections Legacy [22]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, Do all these tags spoil the spoilers?, Gen, Grieving, Star Wars: The Old Republic - The Nathema Conspiracy Spoilers, This stupid agent picked the Legate ending I'm sorry, so much goddamn angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24044548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryFlight/pseuds/CherryFlight
Summary: Natirru made a mistake - in taking steps to try to protect himself and his found family, he neglected to check on someone he never meant to abandon, and years after he had assumed his friend's safety, he discovered he was irreparably wrong.
Series: SWTOR: The Reflections Legacy [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643305
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Haunting Consequence

The others didn’t follow him, and the reason why didn’t occur to him, save some small part deep down that desperately called for his attention in vain. This temple in the rejuvenated world of Nathema and the other people in it, they didn’t feel quite real. Nobody but one, and he could think of nothing else when he saw her corpse half-buried in the debris left behind by Zildrog’s death throes, too pale and too still. All Natirru could do was keep his eyes on her, feeling that it would be somehow disrespectful to turn away, that as long as she was still warmer than her surroundings some part of her was alive enough to still hate him, to still hurt, and he could not abandon her now.

That part of him deep down, that could not make itself louder than his grief, told him the others needed his help. They were calling his name. He could not move or look back, glued to the spot as surely as if he’d been brainwashed again. She scarcely held any warmth anymore. Nearly gone, said the twisted non-logic of his ragged heart.

“This shouldn’t have happened.” It was both right and horribly wrong to speak, to acknowledge her death, like a knife in the chest to release trapped air. “You were supposed to be _safe_ now, Shara, away from everything. I said I’d protect you. I said I’d-…cross the galaxy if I-” _Had to_ was lost in a grating sob that took every other thought away but, “ _You were my friend._ That was true. _That was always true_.”

Warm hands landed on his arms, pushed firmly enough to shift him off balance, and he didn’t fall but it felt like he did, the world changing rapidly, jarringly, snapping into new focus. He stared down at Flow as he desperately pushed him, trying to force him to move. The young Jedi’s face was taut with pain, both his own reaction to being surrounded by death and what Natirru knew to be an empathetic echo. His mind was always open to his son and son-in-law, against all Chiss common sense, whatever that meant anymore.

“Natirru, please,” he said, and his words were almost nauseatingly clear after the fuzziness everything had descended into, daggers into his mind. “I know you’re hurting, I can _feel_ how much you hurt, but _please_ \- Abric’s emergency kit can’t do it alone. If you don’t go help them with Theron, you’re going to lose _two_ friends today. Please…”

Natirru looked over Flow’s head, at Shara’s corpse. He’d seen many bodies gone completely cold, but this one felt unnatural. Out of place. He saw her now as anyone saw her, and that was somehow an injustice. For all her ignorance when they’d first met, all the attention she’d given him being nonhuman that he’d insisted didn’t matter, somehow…why was seeing her with Chiss eyes so important now? Was it because of the rapport formed in spite of them?

“Natirru, please!” Flow begged him again, another solid push back to reality. “Help Theron! Please, don’t let him die, too!”

“Anytime now, sweetie!” Abric called from behind him, and there was a note of pure and utter terror in his voice that Natirru had never heard before. “He can’t exactly slice your droids this time!”

He moved, he turned away, and it did not feel like he was in control. For the first time in years, the thought that he had _never_ been in control surfaced like a monster from the deep. Floaty, automatic, awful like lurching around Nar Shaddaa’s promenade all those years ago, he left behind the dead to try to save the still living.


End file.
